(Credit: Sasha85ru via Getty Images)
A hacker this week launched a new record-breaking DDoS attack, just weeks after Cloudflare thwarted the previous record-setting assault.
The attack, which reached 4.2Tbps, occurred on Monday and targeted an unnamed US service provider, according to Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company that also supplies DDoS protection services.
The assault exceeded the 3.8Tbps DDoS that Cloudflare encountered in late September and briefly ranked as the most powerful “volumetric” distributed denial-of-service attack on record.
(Credit: Cloudflare)Like before, Cloudflare managed to mitigate the new 4.2Tbps attack through the company’s autonomous DDoS protection services. The tremendous wave of internet traffic only lasted for about 60 seconds with the goal of knocking the US service provider offline.
We don't know much about who was behind the attack. In an email, Cloudflare senior project manager Omer Yoachimik said the company sourced the DDoS to a botnet, or an army of hacker-controlled computers, often compromised through malware. In this case, the botnet comprised 54,000 devices and was able to summon the wave of traffic through a “UDP flood attack” and “DNS amplification.”
Cloudflare “observed an unprecedented surge in hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks” in Q3 at 6 million—a 49% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 55% year-over-year increase.
"Out of those 6 million, Cloudflare’s autonomous DDoS defense systems detected and mitigated over 200 hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks exceeding rates of 3 terabits per second (Tbps) and 2 billion packets per second (Bpps),” it said.
(Credit: Cloudflare)Cloudflare suspects that “geopolitical tensions and global events” are fueling the rise of more powerful botnets to help hackers disrupt websites and online services. China was the most attacked location, while the US ranked ninth, according to Cloudflare’s data.